"The battle for the world is not a battle between two political ideals. It is a battle between two views of the nature of thought."
-- Leonard Peikoff
_______________________________________________________________
Psychology deals with mental processes and behavior. Philosophy explains man's understanding of reality in terms of broad abstracts, based on three axioms: existence, consciousness and identity.
Axioms are self-evidences rooted in the perceptual awareness of the world around us. They have a built-in protection against attacks by reality dodgers who disagree: being the basis of all human knowledge, to disagree means relying on the very same axioms.
A child realizes that objects exist and learns to integrate sensations into percepts. This leads to the axiom of identity, which is necessary for human cognition. Entity and identity - differentiating one object from another - leads to the next discovery: the Law of Causality. In time a child absorbs and integrates all axioms.
Entities perform actions; it is what entities do. Walking is not possible apart from an entity with legs. An entity has certain attributes, while lacking others. A child shakes its rattle and hears a sound, whereas a pillow is mute. Every entity has a nature: specific, non-contradictory and limited. An entity must act in accordance with its nature.
On the basis of two points the adult validation of Causality consists in stating the relationship explicitly: the Law of Identity, and that action is an action of an entity: A = A. The alternative would be that an entity acts apart from its nature, or against it. Both are impossible: existence is identity. Apart from its nature a thing is nothing: a ball is not a ball if its nature is not that it is round.
Causality is a corollary of identity. A corollary is a self-evident implication of already established knowledge. The Law of Causality is the Law of Identity applied to action.
Vast numbers of men never get beyond axioms. A primitive tribesman - often even lacking an integrated consciousness - does not have the benefit of Aristotelian principles; he has no way of adhering to axiomatic consistencies. He ends up contradicting the self-evident, as is also the case in various mystical world views.
Of an entirely different order are men who have the benefits of advanced education, yet consciously reject axioms on political grounds, as is the case with Postmodernists - Leftist as well as Rightist subjectivists. A declared war on reality - deliberate and systematic self-contradiction - is the essence of their 'narrative.'
The philosophers of the past two centuries known as the anti-modernists, the Counter-Enlightenment movement or present Postmodernists reject the very idea of the self-evident as the base of knowledge and repudiate all three axioms, attacking them as 'arbitrary postulates,' 'linguistic conventions' or 'Western prejudice or (meta)narrative' (e.g. science).
Is it any wonder that the sequence of events get confused? The military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq are placed prior to the tragic events on 9/11 is but one example of time-line problems with cause and effect, the Law of Causality?
A CNSNews article has identified other difficulties related to direct causes: "A top Democrat told high school students gathered at the U.S. Capitol Thursday that climate change caused Hurricane Katrina and the conflict in Darfur, which led to the “black hawk down” battle between U.S. troops and Somali rebels."
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House (Select) Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee, betrayed his credentials by using another popular rhetorical trick from the Postmodernist cupboard, the false equation: (he) "equated the drive for global warming legislation with the drive for women’s suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries."
Either that, or a dialectical process from the Rousseau school of thought is taking place in the mind of the Representative, the liberation of planet Earth from the oppressions of the perceived 'white, male power structure' (another term for rational civilization).
More such stories have been compiled by M. Barbay in "Global Warming' Caused Regional Problem? (Since 1975)."
Here we see how a seemingly minute, deliberate, philosophical manipulation of the speculative, ideological variety - which separates the world of ideas (subjectivism) from the world of reality (objectivism) - can lead to major problems. But then, it was invented two centuries ago for that self-same purpose: the peddling of literally, 'non-sense.' The cause of crime is the law ... thought creates reality.
Another interpretation would be the manipulation of facts, or the 'Orwellian' rhetorical trick of changing definitions into their opposites resulting in oxymorons, for instance Hegel's "true freedom through the state."
Who remembers that modernity - the Enlightenment and its political offshoot liberalism, once stood for what is presently its opposite? Individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and rationality became collectivism, statism, socialism and anti-reason, the latter presently morphing into the ultimate expression and most frightening form of subjectivism: anti-humanism.
- Filed on Articles in "The Dystopia of Paradise" -
-- Leonard Peikoff
_______________________________________________________________
Psychology deals with mental processes and behavior. Philosophy explains man's understanding of reality in terms of broad abstracts, based on three axioms: existence, consciousness and identity.
Axioms are self-evidences rooted in the perceptual awareness of the world around us. They have a built-in protection against attacks by reality dodgers who disagree: being the basis of all human knowledge, to disagree means relying on the very same axioms.
A child realizes that objects exist and learns to integrate sensations into percepts. This leads to the axiom of identity, which is necessary for human cognition. Entity and identity - differentiating one object from another - leads to the next discovery: the Law of Causality. In time a child absorbs and integrates all axioms.
Entities perform actions; it is what entities do. Walking is not possible apart from an entity with legs. An entity has certain attributes, while lacking others. A child shakes its rattle and hears a sound, whereas a pillow is mute. Every entity has a nature: specific, non-contradictory and limited. An entity must act in accordance with its nature.On the basis of two points the adult validation of Causality consists in stating the relationship explicitly: the Law of Identity, and that action is an action of an entity: A = A. The alternative would be that an entity acts apart from its nature, or against it. Both are impossible: existence is identity. Apart from its nature a thing is nothing: a ball is not a ball if its nature is not that it is round.
Causality is a corollary of identity. A corollary is a self-evident implication of already established knowledge. The Law of Causality is the Law of Identity applied to action.
Vast numbers of men never get beyond axioms. A primitive tribesman - often even lacking an integrated consciousness - does not have the benefit of Aristotelian principles; he has no way of adhering to axiomatic consistencies. He ends up contradicting the self-evident, as is also the case in various mystical world views.
Of an entirely different order are men who have the benefits of advanced education, yet consciously reject axioms on political grounds, as is the case with Postmodernists - Leftist as well as Rightist subjectivists. A declared war on reality - deliberate and systematic self-contradiction - is the essence of their 'narrative.'
The philosophers of the past two centuries known as the anti-modernists, the Counter-Enlightenment movement or present Postmodernists reject the very idea of the self-evident as the base of knowledge and repudiate all three axioms, attacking them as 'arbitrary postulates,' 'linguistic conventions' or 'Western prejudice or (meta)narrative' (e.g. science).
Is it any wonder that the sequence of events get confused? The military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq are placed prior to the tragic events on 9/11 is but one example of time-line problems with cause and effect, the Law of Causality?A CNSNews article has identified other difficulties related to direct causes: "A top Democrat told high school students gathered at the U.S. Capitol Thursday that climate change caused Hurricane Katrina and the conflict in Darfur, which led to the “black hawk down” battle between U.S. troops and Somali rebels."
Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House (Select) Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee, betrayed his credentials by using another popular rhetorical trick from the Postmodernist cupboard, the false equation: (he) "equated the drive for global warming legislation with the drive for women’s suffrage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries."
Either that, or a dialectical process from the Rousseau school of thought is taking place in the mind of the Representative, the liberation of planet Earth from the oppressions of the perceived 'white, male power structure' (another term for rational civilization).
More such stories have been compiled by M. Barbay in "Global Warming' Caused Regional Problem? (Since 1975)."
Here we see how a seemingly minute, deliberate, philosophical manipulation of the speculative, ideological variety - which separates the world of ideas (subjectivism) from the world of reality (objectivism) - can lead to major problems. But then, it was invented two centuries ago for that self-same purpose: the peddling of literally, 'non-sense.' The cause of crime is the law ... thought creates reality.
Another interpretation would be the manipulation of facts, or the 'Orwellian' rhetorical trick of changing definitions into their opposites resulting in oxymorons, for instance Hegel's "true freedom through the state."
Who remembers that modernity - the Enlightenment and its political offshoot liberalism, once stood for what is presently its opposite? Individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and rationality became collectivism, statism, socialism and anti-reason, the latter presently morphing into the ultimate expression and most frightening form of subjectivism: anti-humanism.
- Filed on Articles in "The Dystopia of Paradise" -
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1 comments:
First there was a war on class, then a war on intelligence now a war on logic.
The new millennium has seen a new political movement to "emotionalize" political thought where how individuals feel or are motivated is more important than the reality. Rationalisation is seen as elemental intellectual conservatism and is to be loathed.
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